Brushless 12 Click

How does it work?

Brushless 12 Click is based on the L6235, fully integrated motor driver specifically developed to drive a wide range of BLDC motors with Hall effect sensors from STMicroelectronics. The L6235 includes a 3-phase DMOS bridge, an OFF-TIME PWM current controller, and the decoding logic for single-ended Hall sensors that generate the required sequence for the power stage, and other added features for safe operation and flexibility. It also has a built-in Over Current Detection (OCD) that allows protection against short circuits between the outputs and between output and ground.

Integrated decoding logic of the L6235 provides the correct sequence on the three outputs labeled as U V W for motors with both 60° and 120° spaced Hall effect sensors signals. The sensor outputs are connected to the H1, H2, H3 inputs of the device through the header labeled as HALL. H1 input of the L6235 is internally connected to a monostable that provides a width pulse on the TACHO output. With a pull-up resistor on this output, the resulting waveform at the pin will be a square-wave whose frequency is proportional to the motor rotation speed, with an on-time set by the potentiometer VR1 labeled as TACHO. An additional potentiometer on this Click board™ VR2, labeled as OFF-TIME, can be used for a PWM current regulation capacity.

VR1 potentiometer defines the on-time integrated and compared to a voltage proportional to the desired speed by the Op-Amp LM358 also from STMicroelectronics. The output of the Op-Amp represents the speed error signal. Providing this signal to the VREF input of the L6235, which sets the current in the motor windings, the speed error will act on the motor modifying its torque to maintain the speed at a constant value. This feature of the L6235 can be selected by the switch labeled as VREF that allows the selection between Torque or Speed Mode.

Brushless 12 Click communicates with MCU using several GPIO pins. The RST pin of the mikroBUS™ socket labeled as EN represents the Enable function and serves as Chip Enable that turns OFF all power MOSFETs of the L6235. CS pin labeled as BRK switches ON all high-side power MOSFETs and allows the user to use the brake function. And the last GPIO pin routed to the PWM pin of the mikroBUS™ socket labeled as F/R selects the direction of the motor rotation. It also possesses two connectors, where one of them represents an external power supply labeled as VIN in the range from 8 to 48V maximum, and the next one labeled with U V W is a terminal on which the BLDC motor needs to be connected.

This Click board™ is designed to be operated only with a 5V logic voltage level. A proper logic voltage level conversion should be performed before the Click board™ is used with MCUs with different logic levels. However, the Click board™ comes equipped with a library that contains easy to use functions and an example code which can be used, as a reference, for further development.

Specifications

Pinout diagram

This table shows how the pinout on Brushless 12 Click corresponds to the pinout on the mikroBUS™ socket (the latter shown in the two middle columns).

Notes	Pin					Pin	Notes
	NC	1	AN	PWM	16	F/R	Forward/Reverse
Enable	EN	2	RST	INT	15	NC
Brake	BRK	3	CS	RX	14	NC
	NC	4	SCK	TX	13	NC
	NC	5	MISO	SCL	12	NC
	NC	6	MOSI	SDA	11	NC
	NC	7	3.3V	5V	10	5V	Power Supply
Ground	GND	8	GND	GND	9	GND	Ground

Onboard settings and indicators

Brushless 12 Click electrical specifications

Software Support

We provide a library for the Brushless 12 Click on our LibStock page, as well as a demo application (example), developed using MikroElektronika compilers. The demo can run on all the main MikroElektronika development boards.

Library Description

The library contains a basic functions for using Brushless 12 Click.

Key functions:

• void brushless12_power_mode ( uint8_t mode ) – Sets motor power mode
• void brushless12_work_mode ( uint8_t state ) – Sets motor work mode
• void brushless12_direction ( uint8_t dir ) – Sets motor direction

Examples description

The application is composed of three sections :

• System Initialization – Initializes all necessary GPIO pins
• Application Initialization – Initializes driver inti and enable motor
• Application Task – Every second toggles direction with the break.

void application_task ( )
{
    brushless12_direction ( BRUSHLESS12_DIR_CCW );
    brushless12_work_mode ( BRUSHLESS12_START );
    Delay_ms( 1000 );
    brushless12_work_mode ( BRUSHLESS12_BREAK );
    Delay_ms( 1000 );
    brushless12_direction ( BRUSHLESS12_DIR_CW );
    brushless12_work_mode ( BRUSHLESS12_START );
    Delay_ms( 1000 );
    brushless12_work_mode ( BRUSHLESS12_BREAK );
    Delay_ms( 1000 );
}

The full application code, and ready to use projects can be found on our LibStock page.

Other mikroE Libraries used in the example:

• UART Library (LOG)

Additional notes and informations

Depending on the development board you are using, you may need USB UART click, USB UART 2 click or RS232 click to connect to your PC, for development systems with no UART to USB interface available on the board. The terminal available in all MikroElektronika compilers, or any other terminal application of your choice, can be used to read the message.

mikroSDK

This Click board™ is supported with mikroSDK – MikroElektronika Software Development Kit. To ensure proper operation of mikroSDK compliant Click board™ demo applications, mikroSDK should be downloaded from the LibStock and installed for the compiler you are using.

For more information about mikroSDK, visit the official page.